Monday, June 22

“All they gave me was this ticket to heavenBut that ticket to heaven, said to lie in the bed that you makeNow I'm restless and I'm running from everything, I'm running from everything,I'm afraid it's a little too late”

- 3 Doors Down

I’ve often talked about having faith here. Faith in yourself. Faith in your Higher Power, or God, or whatever you call it. Faith in doing the right thing, regardless of what happens.

So, I’m going to talk a bit about faith again today. :-)

See, to me, faith is SUCH an integral and important part of life that I can’t imagine going through a single day without it. Even on my worst days (and I’ve had PLENTY of those), I find that I still have that little nugget of faith in my heart that says “Hold on…we’ll get through this too.”

Everywhere I look I see amazing examples of faith in action. See, that’s the key. Faith in ACTION. Sure, it’s great to have tons of faith in your heart, but if you don’t ever act on that faith or use it, then really, what good is it to you? But every day we see people that take their faith in hand and do the most amazing things with it. We have seen people that climbed the highest mountains, gone from less than broke to worldwide fame and fortune, I see people all the time that have the faith to keep trying to make it in a band in spite of everything that happens.

These are the stories that motivate us all. You just can’t help but get that good feeling in your heart when you read about them. I was blessed enough to be given a copy of Chris Gardner’s new book recently. You remember him; they made a movie about a single year of his life. It’s called the Pursuit of Happyness. That was just a single year in this amazing man’s life. He’s very open about his experiences, including an abusive alcoholic stepfather, his year of “working homelessness” as he puts it, and many other challenges that he overcame. Throughout this awesome book (Start Where You Are) he constantly reminds us that it was faith in himself and sometimes simply faith that things WOULD get better that helped him make it through the hardest of times.

Faith is one of the most powerful motivators in our lives. Faith is what allows us to reach for our dreams. Faith in ourselves and in something better than what you have right now.

But I think the most important aspect of faith is that it allows us to see beyond our current circumstances. It allows us to believe that whatever we are going through right now is only temporary. Too often we get into the mindset that things are the way they are and they will always be that way. Well my friends, let me tell you this.

THAT’S A CROCK OF SHIT!

Nothing is ever forever! Change is what life is all about. Fear holds most of us back from simply trying something new, making something better, doing something different. Fear is what keeps us all stuck. Faith frees us from that fear. Believe and KNOW in your heart that everything can be different. You just need the faith to give it a shot.

The best example of faith, for me, came from one of my very best friends. See, he had just gotten married and was planning on moving to Orlando. He didn’t have a job, yet, or a place to live, yet. But he believed that Orlando was where he was supposed to be for right now. So he and his new bride made the plans to move.

He told me how his parents reacted and I laughed with him. They kept asking how he could possibly move without a place to live or a job for when they got there. How can you do this?

I simply LOVE his response…he said,

“Do birds pack worms before they migrate, or do they have faith that wherever they land, there will be worms there for them?”

Have faith my friends. You really CAN do anything as long as you believe. :-)